by Logan Jacobs
The vestal who had asked the question knelt to me without saying a word. Other priests and vestals followed, until probably about eighty out of a hundred members of the order of Tarlinis had declared themselves for me. About twenty remained standing defiantly on their feet and looking furious with this turn of events.
“You are free,” Father Yunis told them, “and you are welcome to continue living here if you like. But, it will no longer be as order members, because this is no longer the Order of Tarlinis. It is now the Order of Qaar’endoth. The god whom I believed truly saved us from death at the hands of the Thorvinians.”
“This is a huge mistake,” shrilled the skinny priest with the long forehead. “Tarlinis, tell them! Tell them that they will be punished for this!”
I rolled my eyes and waited for the whiny complaint, the protest of how the invisible god felt he had been wronged.
But there was only silence.
“Is Tarlinis… dead?” Lizzy asked.
Gasps rose from many order members as they stared around in bewilderment. Some of them looked a little worried and guilty. Others looked… relieved.
“I don’t know about dead,” I said. “I doubt it, I don’t see why he would be. But he’s gone anyway. He probably just floated off to be invisible somewhere else.”
“Anyway,” I continued from another mouth, since that self was placed more central in relation to the crowd where more of them could hear me at once, “I thank you all for your vote of confidence. And if you really mean it about wanting to uh, follow me, and help me defeat the Thorvinians, there’s a big favor you could do for me. You have an altar somewhere inside that temple, right?”
“Yes, of course we do,” Father Yunis answered. “We shall rededicate it to you immediately.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s exactly what I was going to ask for. Because if you do that for me, if we can put a statue of… er, not to sound narcissistic or anything, but, you know, me… up there instead of Tarlinis, then I’ll gain a fifth body. And that would really help me get closer to being able to overpower Thorvinius.”
“Wow, that’s how it works?” a vestal asked. “That’s amazing. I want to see it happen. The birth of a god.”
“I have a statue ready and waiting for the purpose,” Florenia announced.
“What?” I asked in surprise. “You do? When did you make that?”
She opened one of Chivalry’s saddlebags and pulled out a one-foot-tall wooden statuette that accurately reflected all of my physical characteristics in miniature. “Oh, over the last week or so,” she said. “Sometimes I have spare moments when you’re not around, and I knew you’d be claiming another altar sooner or later so I figured it would come in handy.”
“Well, you’re one step ahead of me,” I said as I leaned in to kiss the beautiful duke’s daughter on her luscious mouth. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You can thank me later,” she replied. “Two of you can thank me later, like we did that one night--”
“Deal,” I interrupted quickly before the surrounding members of my newest temple could overhear too many details about my love life that they didn’t need to know.
Father Yunis was busy informing some of the younger order members, whom I realized might still be novices, that they were going to be on corpse disposal detail as they suppressed groans and acknowledged his instructions.
Then, we all returned to the ancient waterproof castle and the order members led my companions and my selves to the shrine where their altar to Tarlinis stood. The statue that was presently stationed behind it was made of transparent glass, I suppose to represent their former god’s habit of staying invisible, and shaped like an absolutely average man with very vague facial features, which led me to believe that none of them had ever actually seen what he looked like.
They removed the statue of Tarlinis, not necessarily with anger, but not with any particular show of regret either, and stuck it off in a corner to be carted off to be melted down later, while Florenia reverently placed her most recent carving of me in its place.
I felt a rush of surplus power tingle through me like I had just been injected with some kind of drug and sent out my brand new fifth self from the one of my four existing bodies that happened to be in the least conspicuous position at the time. Then, in the exact same moment, I lifted Florenia off her feet, lifted Lizzy off her feet as well, picked up Willobee from Ilandere’s back and hoisted him into the air, flung my arms around the centaur princess, and hugged Elodette as well. Until about an hour ago, I never would have dared to touch the stern black centaur like that, but the way she had kissed me in our moment of triumph against the Thorvinians reassured me that Ilandere’s warrior handmaiden had warmer feelings toward me than she was willing to let on.
As soon as they did the math, my newest followers erupted in wild cheers.
“Thank you so much, you guys,” I said. “This is really a huge gift you’ve given me. Take care, okay? I really hope no one tries to bother you guys again, but just in case anyone does, the dam should be operational again now if Tarlinis administered the bile judiciously. When I get a chance, I’ll come back this way and check in with you guys.”
“You mean you’re leaving already?” a blue-robed vestal asked.
“Well, yes,” I said apologetically. “I’d love to stay longer and get to know you all, but um, we’re planning to strike one of Thorvinius’ major bases in the Cliffs of Nadirizi. So we need to get over there as soon as possible since the longer we wait, the more temples he’ll keep attacking and the stronger he’ll grow.”
“I’ll come and fight with you, lord,” said a priest with thick eyebrows and a square jaw.
“Uh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said. From what I could tell, these people had had enough advance notice to take shelter and enclose themselves in their fortress before the Thorvinians showed up, and had never actually had to meet them in combat. I didn’t know what kind of combat training they had, if any.
“Thorvinius is my enemy too,” the square-jawed priest said. “He threatened my people, my home, even though he didn’t destroy them, since you showed up in time to prevent that. I don’t want to be someone who just runs and hides and lets monsters rampage across the kingdom. And now I have a god to follow who can actually lead us to victory against Thorvinius. So please, lord, let me serve you.”
Before I could respond, other priests and vestals started chiming in.
“I can wield a sword, my father was a knight, and he taught me before I took orders here.”
“I always had my doubts about Tarlinis. He was not what I thought a god should be.”
“I will come with you and cook for you and do your laundry.”
“I’ve always wanted to see the Cliffs of Nadirizi, I’ve heard they’re really pretty.”
“Well, I know the way there, I can lead the group there.”
“This is exciting, Tarlinis never brought any excitement into our lives.”
“Hang on everyone,” I interrupted. “So… honestly, you’d all probably be better off staying here, but… how many of you want to come? Just raise your hands so I can get an estimate.”
Of the approximately hundred order members, about half of them raised their hands. I didn’t know these people, not really, but it was extremely unlikely that any of them could fight the way Lizzy and Elodette could. On the other hand, it was reasonable to assume that most of them could probably fight better than Ilandere and Florenia could. Willobee’s abilities were a little harder to rank since he probably couldn’t throw a punch any harder than a kitten could, but he could however vomit up slime that dissolved flesh, steel, bone, and stone alike.
I didn’t really want to be responsible for fifty more souls looking to me for guidance and leadership. I already had my hands full taking care of four women and a gnome. But then again, I had another self now. My work capacity had just increased.
And more importantly, I had meant what I
said to the vestal before, about respecting the free will of my followers. These people wanted to accompany me and my friends. They wanted to join me in my quest. They wanted to take up arms against a monstrous threat to the entire kingdom. They were adults of presumably sound mind, so that was their risk to accept and their choice to make.
“All right then,” I said. “Pack your bags and let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Twelve
Several of the former Tarlinians, as it turned out, had traveled to the Cliffs of Nadirizi before and beheld the ancient city that was carved into the red stone, although that had been years ago before Thorvinius showed up and took over the place. After discussing it in a group, we concluded that it would most likely take us about a week to reach the site from my new temple on the river.
Father Yunis had stayed behind to manage affairs back at the temple, and I found that in his absence, the de facto leader of the order was Gavin, the priest with the thick eyebrows and the square jaw who had been the first one to volunteer to fight for me against Thorvinius. Among the vestals, the most popular and assertive one seemed to be a thirty-year-old woman named Hester, who wore her fair hair cropped to chin length and had one blue eye and one brown.
The order, as it turned out, was a fairly wealthy one that enjoyed the patronage of a nearby duke, so they owned many fine horses that they had brought inside to safety when they caught word of the Thorvinian army approaching, and provided me with two of them when we set out so that all five of me could ride. However, as often as not, I chose to hand off my mount and walk in at least a few of my bodies at a time anyway, since many of the priests and vestals were on foot, and I didn’t want to look as though I were too superior to mingle with them and converse.
“What was it like serving Tarlinis?” I asked Hester soon after we started out.
“It was a perfectly decent life,” she replied. “Which wasn’t, ah… which wasn’t necessarily entirely to do with Tarlinis himself, you understand. I chose to become a vestal when I was nineteen, when my parents kept pressuring me to become someone’s wife and bear his children… at least as a so-called wife of Tarlinis, he certainly didn’t expect anything along those lines from me!”
“So, how did you occupy your time in the temple?” I asked.
“Reading, writing, gardening, and other domestic chores… cooking, and sewing, and laundry… it wasn’t anything too exotic, nothing so completely alien to the activities that would have occupied my time if I chose to marry instead,” Hester said. “But in the temple, despite how many of us there were, I could remain my own person and have room to breathe. I wasn’t subject to the whims of a husband or the demands of a brood of crying and screaming children. And Tarlinis was… maybe not the most inspirational figure, but relatively harmless, all things considered. I have heard of gods who are much worse. Including this Thorvinius.”
Another, younger vestal, named Lily, who wore her hair in two blonde braids, said, “Well, I had always thought that all other gods were like Tarlinis. You don’t even seem to belong to the same category as him.”
“I don’t know whether I’ve always even been a god,” I said. “Or at least if I was, I didn’t know it, not until Thorvinius attacked my temple, I lost everything, and my high priest told me the prophecy that suggested that I was. So maybe it doesn’t feel that different to be a god than to be a really, really, really powerful mortal? At least, not in my experience. Pyralis must have perceived the world in complete different ways than you or I.”
“Pyralis?” Lily asked.
“Yes,” I said. “He was a fire god of the desert. I got my fourth body from slaying him in defense of the merchant caravan that my friends, and I were traveling with at the time. But he wasn’t humanoid at all. He took the form of a giant ball of flame. Like a small, angry sun.”
“Then how did you kill him?” Lily asked. “With water?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know whether that would have been possible, if he could be extinguished that way. Besides, even if it were theoretically possible, it would have required way too much water, water that we didn’t have out there in the desert. I used the Sword of Saint Polliver, an enchanted relic from my temple.”
“Wow, can I see it?” Lily asked.
“Sure, later you can, but one of my other selves has it right now,” I replied. “So you can go over there and ask me if you want. But you can’t touch it. That’s important. Anyone who touches the hilt besides me gets instantly incinerated. Well, anyone who’s mortal anyway, so I guess another god could wield it.”
Lily giggled and asked Hester, “Can you imagine Tarlinis wielding a sword?”
“Hmm,” Hester said. “No, not really. I remember him picking up a pen sometimes to scrawl messages on the wall that were supposed to scare us into doing his bidding. Ah, yes, and I very distinctly saw a cherry tart float across the room and vanish bite by bite once. He denied that. He said it was sacrilege to suggest it and that I must have eaten the tart myself. So I backed down.”
The two women broke into giggles again.
Then Lily said, “He wasn’t all bad, though, or I would have run away a long time ago. I remember about a year ago I was in tears because Sister Agatha was trying to tutor me in mathematics and I felt so horribly stupid, and Tarlinis came and sat by me and said nice things. He was really sweet and patient. I didn’t mind having him around most of the time, except when he would get into one of his bratty moods.”
“He wouldn’t have been a bad person,” Hester agreed. “He just never should have been a god.”
“He would too have been a bad person,” Lizzy cut in. “He’s a lying, cowardly little rat that tried to take credit for shit he didn’t do. If we got someone like that in one of my old crews, you know what we’d do with ‘em?”
“Send them to confession and make them do penance?” Lily asked gravely as she toyed with one of her braids. She was young, but the hairstyle made her look even more childlike.
“Huh, guess that’s a trick question, cause it depended on the tools we had handy at the time,” Lizzy said thoughtfully. “But if we got a cage of some sort we’d put ‘em in that and haul ‘em up and throw things at ‘em till we got bored, then we’d just leave ‘em there for the birdies. You know birds like eyeballs best, right? Cause to them they taste like jelly puddings. And if we hadn’t got a cage, but we got some kind of firecracker we’d shove that up their--”
“Lizzy,” I said through gritted teeth.
“…nether regions,” Lizzy concluded. “That posh enough for ya Vander? And then-- hoo boy, they’d be like a big beautiful lightning bug for a few seconds, prettiest thing I ever saw, and then we’d all have to take cover before we got sprayed in bits of charred organ.”
“Wow, that sounds absolutely dreadful,” Lily breathed as her eyes gleamed with awe and fascination. “What other, uh, hobbies did your old crews have? And what kind of crews do you mean? Rowing crews? Work crews?”
“Bandit crews,” Lizzy replied.
“You mean you were a criminal?” Lily gasped. She sounded more impressed by that than by the idea that I was a god. I guess it had to do with what was more novel to her, based on having been raised in a temple.
“Damn straight,” Lizzy said. “Still am at heart, only I break the rules for a good cause now.”
I wasn’t really sure that my beloved she-wolf was the best possible role model in all respects for this impressionable young vestal, but I knew that neither of them would take kindly to it if I tried to intervene in the burgeoning mentorship, so I just bit my tongue and tried to focus my attention elsewhere.
Ilandere was singing my praises to a group of starry-eyed young vestals who had flocked around the ethereally beautiful, silver-dappled centaur, while Elodette hovered nearby and made snide remarks.
“He always looks out for me and gives me the courage to do things that I normally can’t, and if I still really can’t do them physically or mentally, then he just does them for me,” th
e princess said. “He protects me with his sword, so I always feel safe no matter how many enemies are near. He built a bridge across a river for us once. He guided us safely across a mountain where there were a lot of rock slides, and it was terrifying. He’s carried me down stairs before. He’s really strong.”
“By human standards maybe,” her handmaiden scoffed. “His pull strength wouldn’t compare to that of even a juvenile centaur male.”
“But centaur males aren’t kind and gentle like Vander,” Ilandere said. She had a much softer image of me than I had of my selves, and softer than I think most people had who had met or especially fought me.
Florenia was also boasting of my accomplishments, although in a way that was slightly less socially acceptable, especially among religious types. I overheard her say the word “seventeen” and quickly ducked my head and turned my horse aside so as not to get drawn into the conversation that she was hosting.
Willobee was busily boasting of his own accomplishments, both real and invented. According to him, he had already barfed Lizzy’s old bandit crew into submission by the time I encountered him surrounded by them on the road, but he took a liking to me and realized that I was far too naïve to survive out in the world on my own, so he pretended that I had rescued him so that I would allow him to accompany me and serve me throughout my subsequent adventures. He also claimed that he had ingeniously tricked Marvincus the Magnificent into transfiguring him into a toad so that he could snoop through the magician’s secret texts undetected as well as overhearing clandestine conversations between important personages at The Cartwheeling Djinn, efforts which had led to his discovering the location of Thorvinius’ base in the Cliffs of Nadirizi. The gnome conveniently omitted any mention of Lizzy’s and my mission to collect nerisbane or the Thorvinian outpost we had stumbled upon in the course of it.